Small Black Holes: Cloudy With a Chance of Better Visibility

Rambo Tribble writes "As reported by the BBC, astronomers are hoping to reap a black-hole-hunting windfall when a giant gas cloud passes through an area within our galaxy thought to contain numerous small black holes (abstract). When the cloud interacts with the black holes, the resultant emission of X-rays should allow scientists to finally confirm their existence. 'The idea is that as the cloud speeds past these small black holes — some slightly more massive than our Sun but just a few tens of km across — gas will spiral around them faster and faster, heating up to millions of degrees and emitting X-ray light. It is a bit like allowing a giant sink to empty through thousands of tiny drains and looking for any evidence of swirling water.'"

Re:Really?

[TapeCutter]

We have had "proof" for a long time in the mathematical sense, what has been more difficult is collecting enough evidence to say (beyond reasonable doubt) they exist in reality (the movie of stars orbiting the milky way's central black hole is my favorite "smoking gun"). I'm 54, when I went to school we were told black holes were "mathematical curiosities" that might exist in reality but nobody was sure, it was also claimed that it was impossible to observe an exo-planet. We live in "interesting times", science in general and astronomy in particular are experiencing a "golden age" that has it's roots in WW2 and is still gathering momentum.

Using maths to predict the existence of unobserved phenomena, and then looking for evidence of that phenomena in the real world is physics in a nutshell [youtube.com]. It's also the reason astronomers no longer laugh at the big bang theory.